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Here Come the (Stylish) Grooms

As they prepare to head down the aisle, gay couples are making new rules while keeping some of the old ones. Among those grooms-to-be looking for a modern spin on traditional wedding attire are Austen Sydara and Blake Glover, left, and Jim Kloiber and David Straube, right.Credit
Daniel King for The New York Times

ON the evening of June 24, in Paris, men’s fashion writers sat down for the spring Givenchy show at the Pompidou Center. Chairs had been arranged in the street-level lobby, and by the time the show began — an arrow of scowling men in bird of paradise prints — an audience had formed outside the windows as well.

Splashed across the white T-shirts and suits, the jungle green spikes looked like torture instruments, though the sheer abundance of prints took some of the edge off. The editors seemed charged by what Riccardo Tisci had boiled down from a 10-cent surfer theme, and declared it one of the season’s best shows.

We mention all of this because that day a lot of us were following, on Twitter, the passage of the same-sex marriage bill in New York. Little else was discussed between the shows. The vote had huge meaning for the fashion community, both for individuals who wished to marry and the industry that stands to profit eventually from a change in attitudes.

For instance, since the bill passed, J. Crew has outfitted many lesbian couples at its Madison Avenue wedding shop, said Jenna Lyons, the company’s president and creative director. Based on feedback, she said, there was a need for simpler dresses, as a way for a woman to differentiate herself if her partner decides to go the princess bride route. Ms. Lyons is also thinking of offering a white pantsuit. “It’s not necessarily for a lesbian,” she said. No, but the company now has a greater incentive to add the style.

A gay aesthetic has long informed fashion, but it’s going to be interesting to see how quickly retailers respond to gay people as a segment of the wedding market. That will depend, of course, on how fast other states legalize same-sex marriage. Ms. Lyons said her boss, Millard Drexler, wanted to see same-sex couples in J. Crew’s catalog. “We talked about it as soon it happened,” she said of the vote. At that stage, she added, Mr. Drexler wasn’t thinking strategy. “It was a show of solidarity and support.”

That’s exactly how we felt in Paris. Boosted by Givenchy’s joyful attack of prints and the vote in New York, we put 1 and 1 together. Referring to the printed suits, Bruce said, “I immediately pictured them on a beach with two dudes.”

From the outset, we believed that same-sex couples had a unique set of considerations when choosing their wedding attire. “Do we coordinate? Do we mismatch? Do we not care about that all?” Bruce asked. As the comic Sandra Bernhard put it recently in a telephone conversation: “Let’s be honest, you can’t recreate what a typical wedding is with a gay couple. You are the same as that person.” Also, many people who in the 1970s and ’80s escaped their family dynamic have settled into lives. In terms of a wedding, Ms. Bernhard said, “They want something that is lasting, smart and represents continuity in their lives.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the three couples photographed for this article — all of whom are talking marriage within the next year or two — have fairly traditional views. Blake Glover, 30, a stylist, said that he and his partner, Austen Sydara, 23, a retail buyer, imagined a wedding with a “Brideshead Revisited” theme, because they loved the movie. “We’re going vintage traditional — we’re from the South,” said Mr. Glover, who was raised in Fort Mitchell, Ala.

Yet, like the other couples, the two men recognized the need for wedding attire that, as Mr. Glover, who favors bow ties and shorts, said, “takes you out of your everyday.”

David Straube, 46, director of investor relations at Accenture, a management and outsourcing company, has been with Jim Kloiber, 44, a public relations executive, for 16 years, and as Mr. Kloiber wryly noted, their styles have merged. “I think we have 12 blue-checked shirts between us,” he said. For their ideal wedding they want to look elegant but not identical. Mr. Straube described the effect: “It’s more than a business meeting, less than a formal event, and it’s a special moment. That’s the intersection you’re trying to define.”

Photo

Erick Ruales and Paul Bruno.Credit
Daniel King for The New York Times

In styling each couple, Bruce was sensitive to personal tastes. For instance, when he saw photos of Erick Ruales, 34, a photographic agent, and his partner of five years, Paul Bruno, 29, the founder of the online arts quarterly Dirty and the creative director of Latina magazine, he was sure one of them would go for the Givenchy prints.

But Bruce was also eager to provide fashion choices that maybe the guys hadn’t considered and that might inspire others. “I think with a lot of men, there’s still this level of insecurity about dress,” he said.

Arthur Jordan, who has been outfitting men for 44 years at LouisBoston, agreed. He likes to consider how a customer stands, where he puts his hands. “Most people will tighten up,” he said. But to him, the real source of wedding agony is too many rules. Men are “so intimidated by the process they think they’re going to be handcuffed and taken away if they don’t do this or that,” he said. “My mantra is break the rules.”

Despite their vision of Sebastian Flyte in the Deep South, Mr. Glover and Mr. Sydara were the easiest to dress. “They’re really fashion kids,” said Bruce, who had seen Facebook photos of them in black and white outfits. Because of Mr. Glover’s classic style, Bruce suggested a white Band of Outsiders suit. Mr. Sydara wore a black lace outfit from Comme des Garçons; the designer Rei Kawakubo treated the wedding lace in a casual way. That appealed to Mr. Sydara. “I love a good T-shirt,” he said. “Blake and I’ve had deep conversations about what not to do at our wedding. I don’t like that he’s so dressed up, and he doesn’t like that I’m so casual. So we’ll meet in the middle.”

You can tell just how under the radar the topic of same-sex wedding attire is. “I’ve only been to one gay wedding,” Mr. Bruno said as he was being prepped for his portrait with Mr. Ruales. “The couple wore dark suits with white button-downs, no ties.”

Mr. Bruno, who had tried on the Givenchy printed jacket with shorts, was going to wear J. Crew’s khaki Ludlow suit (jacket, $248; pants, $118), a popular style the company has turned out in cashmere, sharkskin and herringbone. Mr. Bruno liked the Givenchy suit, but he and Bruce agreed that it worked better with Mr. Ruales’s extroverted personality, to his own surprise.

“I love the Givenchy,” Mr. Ruales said. “I’m so not the adventurous, print-wearing, shorts guy.” But he conceded that the elements linked with his personality. “To me, it’s a Versace throwback in a fresh, sci-fi way,” he said. “And being from Miami, the tropical motif — I have an emotional connection to it.”

Of all the outfits, Bruce was perhaps most excited by a pair of dove gray suits from Calvin Klein, which will be available at Men’s Wearhouse and tuxedo rental shops. Their appeal, aside from the less-ordinary gray, is that they come with satin lapels or piped ones. That was a good way for Mr. Kloiber and Mr. Straube to look similar but not matched. Bruce gave one partner a bow tie, the other a straight tie.

“Men’s wear is about the minutiae,” he said. “Those small details can make all the difference.” In the same vein, Mr. Jordan recommended a high-quality black suit — he likes the trim-fitting Belvest, an Italian model sold at Louis — over a poky tuxedo. One partner can wear a tuxedo shirt, the other a dress shirt, and Mr. Jordan suggested Massimo Bizzocchi ties inspired by ’30s prints. Socks, too, can be lushly different. “I do everything in my power not to match anything,” he said.

Mr. Straube and Mr. Kloiber, who have discussed getting married next year, said the gray suits were a natural fit, if not one they would have imagined. Glancing down at the suit just before he had his portrait taken, Mr. Straube said, “This says wedding to me.”

That may be the best answer, for now, about whether same-sex weddings constitute a market. Until there are more examples — the gay beach wedding, the serious Four Seasons wedding — it’s hard to know what to market, said Michael Kors, who wed his partner, Lance LePere, on a beach in the Hamptons, with Mr. Kors in his customary black T-shirt and white jeans and Mr. LePere in a chambray shirt and chinos.

“I think there has to be a generation of men and women, teenagers now, who is seeing everything from chambray shirts to Givenchy bird of paradise prints before we know what their fantasies about weddings will be,” Mr. Kors said. “It’s about learning by example.”

Bruce Pask is the men’s fashion editor at T: The New York Times Style Magazine.

A version of this article appears in print on October 20, 2011, on page E1 of the New York edition with the headline: Here Come the (Stylish) Grooms. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe